Chapter Text
John manages to hogtie Javier just outside California, dragging him back to his horse after taking his knife and revolver from his gun belt. The knife was a gift, a well loved and well taken care of silver blade John had given to him one quiet night after he joined him on watch. It was expensive, the blade engraved with ornate filigree and inlaid with blue nickel. Javier had refused to take it, until John had pushed it into his hands and curled his fingers around the handle and insisted it was stolen.
Javier struggles, yells and screams and begs with John, calls him names; traitor, pussy, something in Spanish John can’t quite understand but feels isn’t pretty. John grits his teeth and rides on. It’s a three-day trip back to the ranch anyway.
They camp out when they get halfway through the next state over. Javier stays tied, his wrists bound around the closest tree.
“Where are you taking me?” He asks.
“Back home.” John says.
It takes a day longer than John would have liked, because he had to tackle and restrain Javier another two times after he’d worn his bonds down and ran. He prays he doesn’t do it again; John’s running out of rope.
They reach John’s ranch, still nothing but a foundation and a collection of crates, just as the sun begins to set over the horizon. John helps Javier down off Rachel, leads him over to where Uncle is laid passed out against a tree, and kicks him awake.
“Found a stray,” he says once Uncle wakes.
“Hunted.” Javier corrects. He sits next to Uncle and lets John tie him to the trunk without protest, and smiles with his teeth bared when he comes back around.
Charles watches Javier warily.
His welcome was still warm, a hand on his shoulder and a smile. Charles was always good to him, but he’s cautious now, as if Javier would knife them all in the backs and run west if given the chance. He knows he couldn’t, knows he’d rather find himself on the gallows than do any of them harm, the last remains of his family in one place. It fills him with shame still, burning in his chest and behind his eyes. He had resigned himself to the knowledge that he would never have his justice for their betrayal, but it feels like a failure all the same; to himself, to his dignity. To Dutch.
Charles joins him for a drink once the sun has fallen past the horizon. He unties the rope with steady hands and tosses him a flask of whiskey, which Javier almost drops from the pins and needles shooting up his arms. It's his fourth night tied to Uncle’s tree, and John’s only let him off his leash once.
“Why’d you run?” He asks after Javier has drained a quarter of the flask in a single pull.
Javier keeps his eyes on the fire, watching the sparks float up and die in the night air, and taps a pattern against the metal in his hand. “Why would I stay? I don’t belong here with him.”
Charles takes a deep breath through his nose, claps him on the shoulder, and rises to his feet. When he returns, it’s with the strongest bottle of moonshine Javier’s ever tasted. By the end of the night, Javier is warm all over, and he’s laughing himself near tears despite the harsh burn in his throat.
Missus Sadie Adler comes back from up north, she says, on a fine Tuesday afternoon. A storm had hit the day prior and left the air humid and wet, unusually so for this far west. Javier’s clothes stick to his skin, his hair pulled back and tucked out of his face. It's a familiar, almost comfortable heat, though he’d much rather be in the shade than stood out in the sun being put to work fixing the porch.
Her arrival puts John in higher spirits. He catches her in a hug as she slips off her horse, his back arching as he picks her up and squeezes her tight around her waist. Sadie laughs and pushes at his shoulders.
He tilts his head into her neck, whispers something in her ear, and Sadie’s grin nearly splits her face in two, it’s so wide. She drops her chin to her chest, her ears pink, John’s hands on her arms. John’s smile matches her, bright and joyful, like the world he carries on his shoulders has lightened and he can breathe, finally unburdened.
And yet, John is careful with her, his movements familiar but practiced, like he knows her place here is precarious, like he thinks she’ll run and stay gone. It’s the same way treats Javier. He turns away from them and walks to the barn.
He tries to avoid John as much as possible after Sadie, keeping to himself or sticking to Uncle or Charles when John isn’t nearby. He can feel his eyes on his back, knows he talks about him to Sadie and Charles, but John can’t look at him, not in the eyes.
So Javier avoids him.
Dusk finds John around the fire pit scribbling in a journal. It’s his routine, a nightly ritual he does without fail. Javier has taken to watching him from the porch, knowing he won’t get caught, not by John.
But tonight is different. Javier is cautious, stepping slow and careful to sit adjacent to John, but he makes sure he hears the jingle of his spurs, the heavy sound of his boots. John doesn’t spare him a glance, keeps writing in his ugly sprawling script.
“Why didn’t you turn me in?” He asks, once John closes his journal and places it back in his satchel.
John startles only slightly and stares at Javier for a long moment. At him, but not into his eyes, even now, even when Javier has made such effort to come near and speak to him for the first time in over a month despite his nervous hands and that insistent, never quiet itching in his bones to run; to flee far into the mountains, to try and find a place John could never reach him. John sighs through his nose and blinks, long and slow.
He turns to fully face Javier, “I ain’t no bounty hunter.”
Javier still has a bounty in New Austin and Nuevo Paraíso worth a collective three-thousand five-hundred dollars if turned in dead, and a collective five-thousand and change if turned in alive, or so he heard. His exploits while riding with Dutch up until ‘02 have more than doubled the price on his head. He’s worth more than the land John built his ranch on. He’s worth more than the ranch itself.
“Then I suppose you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”
“You want me to take that money?” He says, voice loud and angry. “You want me to turn you in and watch you hang? What do I get outta that?”
He wants to say “you turned your back on us,” wants to say “I turned my back on you.” Instead, what comes out of his mouth is a scoff.
“Might as well, right? Probably make you feel safer if I’m not around.”
It was one thing, when he thought John had died, to tell himself that it was all on him and believe so earnestly that John had betrayed not only Dutch, not only their family, but Javier. Javier, who knew John almost as well as Arthur, who knew him better than Abigail, better than Dutch. Now, John is alive and warm and breathing right in front of him. It doesn’t sound so convincing anymore.
John’s on him in an instant, grabbing him by his shirt and hauling him to his knees. Shocked, Javier’s hands find John’s wrists and squeeze so tight his bones seem to give. John winces, his face pinched, but still, he can’t meet his eyes, his gaze just a touch too low, too high.
“You’re still my friend.” He hisses. “I went out lookin’ for you ‘cause I wanted you around. If that means nothing to you, then so be it, but I ain’t gonna be the reason you swing.”
Javier swallows. For a moment, it’s just them, breathing in each other’s air, loud over the crackling of the fire. John’s blinking too fast, his wrists trembling under Javier’s palms. Javier opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and tries to speak but can’t find his words, and knows he’d trip over them if he could.
Then John scowls, and the moment is broken. He looks away from Javier completely and wrenches himself out of his hold, shoving him back into the dirt. He’s on his feet so fast he almost stumbles into the fire. Javier doesn’t watch him go, staring at his own hands, feeling how they throb from the tight grip he had on John’s wrists, until the slam of a door startles him out of his mulling.
Javier spends his first night in the house three days later. He had been weathering the late summer storms in the barn, but tonight the rain is hard and heavy and shows no sign of stopping, so he tugs his bandana up and pulls his hat down, and jogs to the porch.
It's warm inside, lit by the fireplace. The main room is not yet furnished, just bedrolls pushed together in the night to form a pile of padding. Charles is awake, sitting in a bare corner, picking dirt from his nails.
Javier removes his shoes and tiptoes around John and Sadie, curled into each other. He’s got his arms around her hips, his head pressed into her stomach. Something sparks in Javier’s chest, but he focuses on not tripping over the piles of bedding instead of John. Whatever it is, it makes him hot down to his fingertips, down to his knees where they shake under his weight.
Charles watches him as he crosses the room and makes no protest when Javier joins him in his corner. He pays him no mind, even as Javier sits shoulder to shoulder with him, staring at John and Sadie with such undisguised affection Javier’s hair stands on end. It’s the same way he looks at Javier, just a bit, heavy but kind and soft, the same warmth he shared with Jack and Abigail, Tilly and Mary Beth, Kieran too. The way he looks at John is the same way he looked at the girls, but he’s giving Sadie different eyes, eyes that remind Javier of Arthur and Charles returning to camp from days of hunting with smiles he would never see again. Half the time, their kill was just shy of enough of something to be proud of, and Pearson would thank them for it and be on Arthur the next day about needing meat for the stew.
They stay awake together, listening to the snapping of wood in the fireplace, and talk softly about John and Arthur, Sadie and Abigail. It’s nothing they haven’t heard before, just new context provided for old stories, until Charles goes still and quiet and he turns to Javier.
“Why were you with Dutch?”
“For survival,” Javier replies quickly, sounding pathetic to his own ears despite his steady voice. “I woulda died out there on my own.”
Charles stares at him for a long moment. “You were surviving just fine on your own. Dutch…” he pauses, considering his words carefully. “Dutch just—“
“He gave me everything.” He says. His stomach churns, his nerves torn and raw and buzzing in his guts.
Dutch had provided for him a sense of belonging, something he craved so deeply it made his chest ache, and he had dug his claws into it and held it close, and it was still ripped away. He had clung to nothing but scraps for three years and when he finally let go it took his nails and his will with it. But it was his sympathy, his kindness, that drew Javier to him. Dutch had captivated him almost immediately, his silver tongue working fast to sweet talk Javier so well he hadn’t realized what he was doing until he was already living with them for a week.
Javier stands then, dizzy and unsteady on his feet. Slowly, he makes his way around the sleeping bodies on the floor and claims the bedroll farthest from John. When he wakes, the sky is still black, but the rain has stopped. He’s not as careful leaving as he was coming in.
Javier doesn’t hear a word from Charles about Dutch until weeks later. They had finished painting the barn and fixing the fence and had added a bed to the house. It sat on the floor in the master bedroom, lacking a frame. John had come back that day, with a few more bruises, a few more scrapes like he always did after a ride with Missus Adler. She came trailing behind him and grinning ear to ear, looking proud and vicious, and had given Charles a kiss on the cheek, to which he had laughed and pulled her in to kiss her proper. She had smiled at Javier after, a real genuine Sadie Adler smile, one he hadn’t seen for years if he ever saw it at all. He tipped his hat to her and smiled so hard his face hurt.
Charles takes him to the barn to carry in bales of hay in preparation for the cows John planned to raise. There had been a sense of unease present in their every interaction since his first and only night in the house. Javier had tried to scrub any thought of Dutch from his mind, focusing only on their work. John had been stressing about the ranch, talking about Abigail and her impending arrival, months out in the fall.
He asks more of Dutch then. His question is simple, spoken after an offhand comment regarding loyalty or family. It startles him when he hears it and the answer sits heavy on his tongue.
“Why did you stay with Dutch? You could have left with Tilly.”
The question is loaded, like guns pointed at his face as he was dragged by his ankle through the mud. Dutch left John and Arthur, sure, but he left Javier too. In Guarma, Javier had told them to go and it seemed logical at the time, and that’s what he told himself over and over every time he caught himself thinking about it after the fact. But, sitting in a cage, waiting, he wished they had all been captured, humiliated and treated the way Javier had been. At least it would have been together, and maybe seeing Micah get his face pushed into the thick mud would have made it worth it. Regardless, he doesn’t know what he had expected, for them to fight or to drag him into the forest at the risk of being shot? Dutch had come back, in the end, so it had hardly mattered at the time if he got kicked around first.
But Javier’s leg still aches when it gets cold or rains, and the scar left is a nasty, puckered bruise.
It was after that that his faith had faltered, that the seed of doubt planted itself in his chest and sprouted roots that dug into his heart and lungs and curled around his ribs and squeezed. And yet he stayed, for years after, he stayed.
“Loyalty is everything. Without it, we have nothing.” He says, practiced, reciting words he had told both John and Arthur several times over. Then he stills, swallowing, and looks away from Charles’ unwavering gaze. He looks into the dark corner of the barn behind him, blinks a few times to clear his head, forcing back the pressure in his sinuses, and says, voice low and tired, “Where would I go? Dutch was all I had.”
It's an excuse, they both know it. Javier had plenty, even without Dutch himself. He had made a family out of the gang, odd as they were, out of Tilly and Mary Beth and Karen, out of Sean and Hosea and Lenny. Hell, even Kieran had started to feel like a friend. He’d known them better than he ever knew Dutch, and despite all that he would have killed himself seven times over for him if he asked. But Dutch wasn’t like their father. He was a patriarch, distant but projecting this aura of caring and kindness and protection, a false sense of security that had cracked and crumbled before they even stepped foot in Lemoyne after Guarma.
Dutch was no father. No father would leave their sons to rot in prison or get stabbed by soldiers in the pursuit of something unattainable. He had kept Javier fed and had given him a place to sleep unburdened by the prospect of dying in the night. But it had meant nothing to him, not like it had to Javier. It aches and burns, that loss, even now five years later. Dutch had felt like a father to him until the end, even as Javier realized it was a lie, an elaborate act of manipulation. He clung to Dutch in desperation, out of a need for familiarity after it all, but Javier is not desperate anymore.
Still, he can’t help wondering how much of it was false, can’t imagine the man who made sure he never went hungry again was the same man who sat them down and told them John and Arthur were dead in the same breath he used to call his sons traitors. Javier had believed him then, when it had all felt so hopeless and he had nothing to hold on to without John and Arthur, without his brothers and sisters.
Javier still has a family. He still has Sadie and Charles.
He still has John.
He takes a breath, spares Charles a glance and expects to see pity where there is still nothing but that kind, warm sympathy. It makes him itch all over. He stands, shakes his hands out, and walks out of the barn and towards the house, ignoring the eyes on his back as he goes.
Abigail arrives in a manner that mirrors Sadie’s, on a hot and muggy Tuesday afternoon. She runs towards John, lets him wrap his arms around her waist, and spin her around, her skirts billowing in the wind. Javier watches Sadie smile, bright behind her gloved hands hiding the healthy pink tint that had risen to her cheeks. Jack stands at Sadie’s side, his hand fisted in the back of her shirt and her arm around his shoulders. It's almost worse seeing Jack than it is Abigail. The years show more on him, twelve now and nearly as tall as his mother, instead of a boy who just barely reached Javier’s hip and who sat at his campfire and listened to him play and sing until he fell asleep sitting up.
When Abigail spots him, standing on the porch steps, her smile drops and her eyes widen likes she’s seen a ghost. A walking corpse.
Her arms fall from John’s neck. He doesn’t let her go at first. His hands stay tight at her waist. He’s uneasy, his eyes narrowed and his lip curled. She pushes at John’s chest and takes off towards him, stumbling slightly in her haste, and throws her arms around his shoulders.
When he regains feeling in his limbs he presses her head into his neck and squeezes her so hard her ribs give just slightly. She says nothing, just lets her tears dampen his cotton collar. For a moment, it’s like the past eight years never happened. It's not any old reunion, that he can’t pretend, but the weight of the gang’s collapse, the weight of his loss, of his guilt, he can ignore if just for that moment.